lucidus

my writing diary (or something)
2018-02-13 21:13:46 (UTC)

365.43 - Polaroids

There’s a feeling I love.

It feels like coming back home. Or like returning to a vivid memory I thought was long lost. It brings to life something greater than what I can perceive with only my senses.

Sometimes, a photo triggers it. Subtle details… There is no recipe to make a picture special like that; what creates the magic is usually different every time and can seem completely random. It feels like I can look into the picture instead of just looking at it. It’s like it’s inviting me to lean closer, to peek inside. It makes me feel like I can smell the air of the place the photo was taken, or to hear the sounds of that environment. It’s always more than just a picture.

Sometimes it’s a foggy road lit by streetlights. Sometimes just trees. Or the silhouette of a mountain against a starry night sky. It can be a calm lake, or an interior with lots of houseplants. Sometimes it’s not a photo at all: drawings have created this effect as well. Every once in a while, an artist from across the globe recreates something that feels so deeply mine. Like they’ve reached into my brain and woken up something that I had forgotten ages ago, but that has shaped the core of who I am as a person.

I think it has to do with memories. My childhood, my parents, my roots, my past, and everything positive and calming I’ve experienced. More often than not, nature is involved in these special little moments that just make me take a deep breath and stop for a moment. Perhaps it’s my brain returning to old neural pathways for just a second… The photo gives my thoughts a little push to lodge them back to old tracks, ones that are good, not stained by the cynicism of my present life, until my mind inevitably clicks back to its usual state of chaos. I cherish those little moments that often only last for the duration of one inhale… They represent everything that’s beautiful and pure.

I’ve noticed some patterns. Rainy weather, light grey fog softening the horizons. Droplets on big, sturdy rainforest plants. Greenhouses with subtropical flora. Nighttime, and yellow lightbulbs that shine calmly to rebel against the immense darkness, only banishing the shadows from a small circle of light. Morning light on breakfast tables, sleepy log cabins untouched by the passage of time. Frost lining individual blades of grass, entire fields gradually fading to white. Visible breaths on chilly December mornings, shining yellow when the scarce rays of sunlight hit the thin vapor… Ocean waves crashing onto rocky shores somewhere so far away that you can’t hear a sound.

I suspect that those little things wouldn’t mean nearly as much to anyone else. The impressions and feelings evoked by those pictures are nameless and unique to me; no one else can experience them the way I do. Being a one of a kind brings its own kind of isolation with it, but the beauty of these things comes from that exactly; these complex emotions are mine, and no one else could ever feel them exactly the way I do… no one can steal them from me.




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